Friday, April 29, 2005

I was travelling by my car and had stopped by the side of the road to clip on the handsfree to the mobile, to make a call. There's this young chap walking by. He stops besides my car and starts to inspect it a bit from the outside and picks up one of the tinted, rolled-up glass for a mirror. And then, for a minute or two, he considers the tinted window glass to be his bedroom wardrobe mirror and proceeds to groom himself by combing his hair, adjusting his tucked-in shirt, etc !! All the while, my engine was switched on and purring softly !!

I couldn't help but smile :)

Reminded me of the comedy scene from recently watched "Chandramukhi" (cast: "Superstar" Rajni), where Vadivelu (the comedian) gets plastered on his face with a cake or some kind of cream, by the car driver, for doing something very similar ! :)

Read the tale of Opera's CEO now swimming from Europe to USA. He promised that he'd do it if Opera made the 1 million download mark in first 4 days of launch (it did). This may be a kewl publicity tactic, but then the CEOs facing the water now :)

Slightly long story:After starting very late, at about 9.30pm, for the show at 10pm, we reached the road in front of the complex at around 9.50pm (thanks to some smart route selection by my friends, else we'd have been delayed much more). The distance of hardly 100 meters to the theater gates took more than 15mins. Damn the traffic jams !!

And once we got in, it was another long wait for a parking slot. We managed to convince one of the theater parking lot guys to give us an easy spot in a not-so-usual location and got out of the car at 10.15pm. He had informed us that the show was being delayed. We moved to the main gate and were informed that the show was only going to start at 10.45pm. After loitering around for some time, we finally got in at 10.30pm. And the show actually started at 10.45pm. Ads till then !!

One thing that I liked at the screening was that towards the end of the ads (both at the start and after the break), there were slides giving out information on the fire exit locations. This is indeed a nice thing to see. Sathyam cineplex really sets the standards on the experience front nowadays.

Friday, April 22, 2005

A man and his wife were having some problems at home and were giving each other the silent treatment.

Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight. Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper, "Please wake me up at 5:00 AM." He left it where he knew she would find it.

The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight. Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn't wakened him, when he noticed a piece of paper by the bed.

The paper said, "It is 5:00 AM. Wake up."

Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests. God may have created man before woman, but there is always a rough draft before the masterpiece.

A boy worked in the produce section of the supermarket. A man came in and asked to buy half a head of lettuce. The boy told him they only sold whole heads of lettuce, but the man was persistent. The boy said he'd go ask his manager what to do.

The boy walked into the back room and said, "There's some jerk out there who wants to buy only half a head of lettuce." As he finished saying this he turned around to find the man standing right behind him, so he added, "And this gentleman wants to buy the other half."

The manager okayed the deal. Later the manager said to the boy, "You almost got yourself in a lot of trouble earlier, but I must say I was impressed with the way you got yourself out of it. You think on your feet, and we like that around here."

Commandment 1: Marriages are made in heaven. But then again, so are thunder and lightning.

Commandment 2: If you want your wife to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

Commandment 3: Marriage is grand -- and divorce is at least 100 grand!

Commandment 4: Married life is very frustrating. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.

Commandment 5: When a man opens the door of his car for his wife, you can be sure of one thing. Either the car is new or the wife is.

Commandment 6: Marriage is when a man and woman become as one; the trouble starts when they have to decide which one.

Commandment 7: Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you say. After marriage, he will fall asleep before you finish.

Commandment 8: Every man wants a wife who is beautiful, understanding, economical, and a good cook. But the law allows only one wife.

Commandment 9: Marriage and love are purely a matter of chemistry. That is why the wife treats her husband like toxic waste.

Commandment 10: A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.

Bonus Commandment story.

A long married couple came upon a wishing well. The wife leaned over, made a wish and threw in a penny. The husband decided to make a wish too. But he leaned over too much, fell into the well, and drowned. The wife was stunned for a moment but then smiled, "It really works!"

...it’s possible to install linux on gmail. richard jones wrote some python that allows you to mount linux within gmail. you can use all kinds of unix commands to communicate with gmail like ls, rm, grep, cp, etc. it’s an ongoing project in development but it’s very cool and allows you basically a 2gb virtual drive of sorts....

I just learnt that Flickr has increased the storage for free accounts from 100 images to 200. Thanks to Yahoo for the acquistion. For more details on the "improvements" due to the acquistion, read this.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Attended my first CBM meet on 9-Apr-2005 AD. The person responsible for dragging me into this meet, Visithra, has a tale to tell of her absence.

Her absence helped in bringing the number of people who attended the meet to 11 :) We were supposed to climb atop St. Thomas Mount using antics that Ocean's Eleven had used for their heist, luckily we were spared of such heroics and took the usual mundane car and bike route. The cattle enroute provided the only break and excitement in the journey atop the hill, not to mention non-stop chatter from the passengers ;-)

The theme of the meeting, apart from the confused United Express pilot doing a hundred sorties (touchdown, takeoff, circle, touchdown, takeoff, ... - ok you get the picture now) on the Meenambakkam runway, seemed to be the incessant chanting by Sandhya that she had to get home early for her evening snax (looks like she missed the bajjis so desperately) :)

As for the actual proceedings (the way it happened), photos, and stories, I'll leave it to the rest :)

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Go figure(there are some pretty sane reasons) ! Same seems to be the case with US too.

In many countries, listening to most radio communication is not a crime (US has an exception for cellphone frequencies). It is also not a crime in many countries to provide frequency, modulation and related information about radio communication made by anyone. Using the information for criminal purposes is a crime in most countries. Publishing the information obtained from some communications (some frequency bands) is a crime in some countries. But merely listening to it is not.

FWIW, in India, it's a crime to even listen to such unencrypted traffic.

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Sudhir Parasuram is an employee of HCL Technologies Ltd, working for Cisco Systems Inc. Everything here, though, is his personal opinion and is not read or approved by others before it is posted. No warranties or other guarantees will be offered as to the quality of the opinions or anything else offered here.